Queso en en Banco

What’s happening folks? I’ll tell ya what’s happening here… crummy weather. I feel like I’m in Lancaster, PA in October except none of the trees are turning orange and losing their leaves. It’s been only about 65 for the past few days here and gloomy looking at best. Once in a while the sun peeks out for a second to say hello, but then it’s right back where it came from, behind the clouds. Luckily it hasn’t been raining all that much (or really at all) and it’s supposed to get to be warmer starting at the end of this week and into next week. That’s when summer will ideally kick-off and we’ll be in what I like to call ‘Real Australia’ rather than ‘Actually real Australia’. Because in my mind, ‘Real Australia’ is always sunny and warm and the waves are big and friendly and warm and wonderful. Give it a couple weeks.

Alright so my job is pretty cool. I like the people I work with for the most part and I get paid fairly well. I worked a split shift on Friday starting at noon and ending around 11pm. The first 3 ½ hours I was just running food/drinks and bussing tables. It was super busy and a bit hectic, but enjoyable nonetheless. Easy peezy job for me… Then I had an hour or so break before I had to be back for the real fun. Sean (my manager) informed me that I’d be ‘taking the downstairs’ with Samson shadowing me, which meant I got to wait on people finally. Samson said he’d take the two monster tables of people that were supposed to come in (and I’m glad he did) because they ended up being real doozies. The one table he did (with 20 people) was nice enough, but when they food came out everyone forgot what they had ordered and so they had to keep passing the dishes back and forth until it all got figured out. The other table he did (10 people) was a group of Asians that, for the most part, struggled with English and, on the whole, struggled with tipping. I didn’t have to deal with them, however, except to bring them some food and clear their table.

All of the people on my tables ended up being much nicer, friendlier, simpler, and in a few cases, drunker. I took care of one larger party (8 or 10) people that were seeing their Canadian friends off and all of them ordered steins of beer (1 liter each), which cost ~$20. 2 or 3 hours and $400 later they were outta there and I was $30 richer, which is pretty fantastic considering nobody in Australia is supposed to tip. I must have gotten lucky, however, as I was able to rake in a pretty decent pull of tips on the night. Overall it was a fun and different experience and although I’m nowhere close to being sure of what I’m doing completely, I’m moving in the right direction. I work Wednesday – Saturday this week. I’m scheduled for 24 total hours, which is 8 more than last week so that’s gotta be a good sign.

Let’s see what else is going on… Well on Saturday we all had a kind of lazy day again around the house. We did some cleaning and picking up of trash and whatnot before going out to a semi-fun little bar with some people from my work. We all went over to Anna and Lina’s house (two girls I work with) before heading to the bar in Bondi. The dance floor was sub-par and the DJ was even worse, but I got a couple dance moves in before getting tired and heading home.

Erin and I went to church Sunday night and it was a nice service. It was much shorter this week and they added a bongo-playing dude for 2 of the songs. I think he must have been the Pastor’s nephew looking for a gig or something because he was not too good. He didn’t play the bongos for the last song, however, which was perfect because it was one of my favorites. After the service we went to a BBQ at Big Ben’s house (the pastor) and ate all sorts of delicious food. They made beef kebabs, salad, some sort of rice salad dish, and some sort of chick pea salad dish… all of which were far superior to anything I’ve been cooking up lately. Tim, this sweet dude I met the first night of church and who was in the bible study we went to, gave us a ride to the BBQ and back to our house afterwards. He is a baller. He is such a nice guy and his wife is awesome and their house was so cuters (that’s where the bible study was) and they made chocolate covered strawberries. These people are so nice to us. Also we met an American dude at church named Jay. He’s a nice enough guy but I think he’s a bit peeved at us because he was the token American at church. Now we are there and since we are newer everyone wants to hear our accent over his. HA, tough luck Jay!

Today Lindy, T, and myself went to Watson’s bay and walked around this national park thingy called Gap Park. The pictures below are a shot of what we saw and also the general gloomy weather we’ve been dealing with.




Last night I spent 2-3 hours researching fun things we need to do over the next couple weeks and I am excited to say I’ve found quite a few over the next couple weeks/months/etc. Tomorrow night we are going to a free salsa lesson. Following the lesson is a Latin Salsa party that supposedly rages on all night. We’ll all be salsa experts by then so it should be fun. Lindy will show up late because he works until 9 or so and T probably won’t make it because he works until his shoes wear through (he works in a sweatshop from 4am to 2am and sleeps for an hour or so in between days). Erin has made a nice friend called Dianna, but none of us are sure yet if she is real, imaginary, or some sort of halfsies. We’ll see tomorrow as Erin claims she’ll be joining us for Salsa. We’re going to see a comedian for my birthday in a couple weeks (I found him during my research time) and I’m psyched for that. He’s a funny dude based on the youtube clips I watched of his and he’s performing at the Opera House, so how cool is that? I’ll fill you in on other things we’ll be doing as they come up, but for now as a taste I’ll inform you that they include, but are not limited to… Billy Joel in concert, Monday night poker at the University center, secondhand jean/leather jacket market at Kings Cross, Bob Dylan’s art on exhibition, betting on crab racing, giving blood to Australian Red Cross… get excited for updates.

Shout it out…

Garrett – thanks for the e-mail filling me in on all the happenings at Stanford right now. I think that I speak for all of the rescuers (so basically just me and Lindberg as of late… or as of ever… but hopefully that’ll change) in saying that I want you to start your own blog just so I can have something to read and make me laugh all the time. You are great.

That is all people – keep rocking is old school.

Jesse “captain makin’ it happen” Meredith

**side note… please leave comments, but know that I may not respond directly to them in the comments section. If you want to say something specifically to me, send me an e-mail at JesseM288@gmail.com and I will respond asap, thanks**